


What it Takes

by nebulas (strawberry_bee)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, M/M, a lot like parks n rec okay, but at the end of the day everyone's happy and getting along, lil bit of angst due to plot, lots of fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 00:05:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8422993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberry_bee/pseuds/nebulas
Summary: Three words. Buddy Cop Au. Tracer’s the good cop, McCree’s the bad cop.





	1. McCree's past revealed

The work at Overwatch police department never ends. Or at least, that’s what Tracer likes to believe. In reality it was a very drawn out day in, day out process in which she filed papers and listened to Mccree try to shoot crumpled up pieces of paper into the opposing trash can. But still, he was her partner and she was going to make their city free of crime.

So, on an average tuesday morning where Tracer brought in her strawberry jelly filled donuts, and Mccree proceeded to eat all of them, they got their first real, serious gig. Interrogate the criminal. 

“Okay okay, Jesse, are you listening? This is big, super big! Wipe your mouth you got powder in your beard,” Tracer says, hopping into her swivel chair. She thrust herself off from her desk so she sailed across their tiny cubicle, nearly crashing into Mccree as she did so. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m listenin’.” Mccree says, catching her chair just inches from smashing into his knees. He spins her around so they’re facing each other, before leaning back in his chair nonchalantly. 

“So this guy is bad, real bad. Burned down the baby’s favorite candy company bad,” Tracer says, leaning forward animatedly. Mccree raises an eyebrow, and Tracer knows he’s hooked.

“An’ why did we get saddled with interrogating this guy, Lena?” He asks. 

“I told you, my codename is Tracer, and anyways, it’s because Jack is absolutely swamped right now with other stuff.” She says. 

“So we’re gettin’ the short end of the stick,” He says, beginning to frown. Tracer sighs in frustration, ruffling her hair up so she looked vaguely like an angry cockatoo.

“Listen, Jesse, if we don’t do the boring stuff, we’re never gonna get anything good! And this is some good stuff! We can’t mess it up,” She says, bouncing up and down in her chair. Mccree seemed to glare at her for favorite moments as she practically vibrated in place. At long last he inclined his head. 

“Fine, what’s our angle?” He asks, and Tracer gives a whoop of excitement, launching herself off Mccree’s knees to spin around the cubicle. She slams her knee into her desk, and yelps in pain. 

“Told ya not to do that,” Mccree intones. It’s an everyday occurrence. Tracer believes she’ll need new knees by the time she’s fifty. 

“I say we play up the bad cop, good cop role. It’ll be easy peasy,” She says, turning around in the chair so she can wrap her arms around the back. She rests her chin on top of the chair and grins cheekily at Mccree, who glowers right on back. 

“I can be the bad cop!”

“Lena….”

“Fine, fine, you can be a grump and scare everyone away, while they’re charmed by my bubbling personality,” Tracer says, and copies his frown right back at him. Mccree only raises his eyebrows at her in mild annoyance before turning to his computer. 

Together they pour over the files of the criminal. Well, Mccree polishes off the rest of Tracer’s donuts, and Tracer learns all about the renegade Gabriel Reyes, A.K.A. the Reaper. Tracer hated to admit it, but she got chills reading some of the stuff he did. 

“This is really serious, ‘Cree, we can’t mess this one up,” She says softly, closing out of the case report. 

“Never dreamed of it,” Mccree says around the last bit of donut. Tracer whacks him in the arm with some of the papers on her desk. 

“Did you even pay attention?” She demands.

“Yeah, yeah, somethin’ or other about how he runs a mafia of sorts,” He replies, unruffled by the entire situation. 

“Yeah, and this is super big! If it’s really true we’re gonna be making international news,” Tracer says, already dreaming of all the talk shows she would be on, with Mccree glowering in a corner, playing up the bad cop act. 

“Don’ get ahead of yourself now, we haven’t even spoke to the guy yet,” Mccree says, scooting away from her to grab his cowboy hat off the edge of the cubicle.  
“Jesse, that does not make you look like a bad cop,” Tracer says. 

“It is when I tilt it over my face,” Mccree says, and shows her for extra effect. Tracer rolls her eyes. Mccree was just plain weird. 

“C’mon, we wasted enough time talking about this, let’s go let’s go,” She hops to her feet and smooths her uniform down. She holds a hand out to help Mccree to his feet, and he ignores the offer, getting to his feet on his own. Used to it as always, Tracer covers her offer by running her hand through her hair, because she was just that cool. 

Together they walked down to the interrogation room, feeling quite cool. Or well, Tracer felt pretty cool, at long last she was being a real cop. And part of her was nervous as well. If they were right about Gabriel Reyes being involved in Blackwatch, the FBI would have to get involved, and she wasn’t sure how that would go exactly.

They pause in front of the door, and Tracer turns to her partner. He’s looking at her with a disinterested air, like they’ve already done this a thousand times, and will do it a thousand times more. 

“Ready?” She asks, taking a deep breath and letting it out. 

“You’re gonna do jus’ fine, Lena,” he says, resting a hand on her shoulder. She smiles at him, and Mccree offers her a sly wink. 

“Okay, bad cop faces on. Or yours. Whatever. Let’s do this,” She rests her hand on the handle, and after a moment opens it. 

Inside the clean polished room is a muscular man with a black beanie covering his ears, gray stubble covering his face. He looks up at the two of them, eyes passing right over Tracer and focusing on Mccree. 

“Dad?” Mccree whispers. 

“Jesse,” Gabriel says. 

“What.” Tracer says. 

She slams the door shut and turns to Mccree. 

“You didn’t tell me he was your dad!” She hisses. 

“Gabe ain’t my father, he jus’ raised me is all,” He explains hurriedly, putting his hands up in a disarming gesture. 

“Yeah. Father. Figure.” She says, jabbing her finger into his chest with each word. “This entire interrogation is blown now! You have a personal connection to the subject!” She turns away from him, and paces the hallway, pulling at her hair in frustration. 

“Hey, don’t get yourself all worked up now, it’s been years since I’ve even spoken to him,” Mccree says, reaching out to grab her shoulder. 

“This was probably the most important moment of our professional lives! Morrison promised us with this, and you couldn’t even...pay enough attention to the debriefing to figure out you know him,” She says, wrenching her shoulder away.

“You got me, I fucked up on this one, I know. But I know things about him that could get him sent to jail for a good while. He knows that, and he knows that I-we know that. He’s gonna try everything in his power to minimize the damage,” Mccree says. Tracer tilts her head to the side, studying him for a long moment.  
“So what you’re saying is, is that we make a deal with him?” She asks. 

“Yeah, else he’ll clam right up an’ we won’t be goin’ anywhere for a good while,” Mccree says. 

“I don’t like the idea of this, Mccree. But if that’s what it takes, fine. But you’re explaining to me how you know him after, you got it?” She says. Mccree takes a deep breath, and after a moment nods, tilting his cowboy hat to her. 

“You earned the truth, Tracer,” He says. Tracer squints at him for a moment, suspecting some sort of joke out of it. 

“Tell me what our plan is, then,” She says instead. 

 

After twenty minutes planning in the hallway, they slip back into the interrogation room. Tracer takes the chair on the right, Mccree on the left. Reyes has his eyes trained right on Mccree, not letting him out of his site for a moment. 

“We have a deal for you, Mr. Reyes,” Tracer says, sitting down. She rests her hands on the table, looking at Gabriel unflinchingly. Beside her Mccree leans back in his seat, arms crossed over his chest as he stares him down. 

“And what would that be?” he asks, eyes never leaving Mccree for a second. 

“You confess to illegally transporting illegal weaponry all over the southwestern united states. We take you to court, you get fifteen years in jail, which is the bare minimum offered, not counting your other crimes,” Tracer says. 

Gabriel Reyes laughs right in her face. 

“Do you know why you’re interrogating me, girl?” He asks, at long last putting his focus on her. He leans forward in his seat. “Your little chief has it out for me. Jack Morrison didn’t want to face his good old partner, and sent his little newbies to sentence me instead,” 

Tracer bit her tongue, fighting back the shock that wanted to be shown so clearly on her face. 

“It doesn’t matter how Morrison and you are connected, we’re here for your crimes, nothing else,” She says, reminding herself to keep her hands still on the table, no matter how much she wanted to clasp them into fists. She makes herself not look over at Mccree, to see how he’s taking this news. 

“Fair enough, after all, a good little cop wants to know the crimes going on around her,” Gabriel glances over at Mccree, twists his mouth a little and turns his attention back to Tracer. 

“Your partner there, did you know he was involved with me? Oh, all those little reports you heard, about the pallets of ak-47s, they never would’ve seen the light of the border if it wasn’t for our sharpshooter Jesse Mccree,” He says, tilting his chin up arrogantly. This time, Tracer does ball her hands into fists. So maybe Mccree had a past, didn’t they all? 

“That belongs in the past, Reaper. I no longer deal in that sort of thing,” Mccree says. 

“Oh, of course, you’re too good to remember the things you’ve done,” Gabriel says, a mocking tone in his voice. 

“Like hell I’ve forgotten,” Mccree rumbles. Tracer glances over, notices how tightly wound Mccree is. 

“Why don’t you tell me more about these transports then, Reaper,” She says, turning her head back to Gabriel. He smiles mockingly at her instead.

“You want me to spill all my secrets, as if I couldn’t possibly know I’m being recorded. Fine, I’ll play, but only if Jack has to listen to the tapes later,” He leans forward in the seat once more, rests his elbows on the table, and begins. 

He tells them everything. Every last ounce of it. From the time Mccree was recruited to the previous day when he was arrested. At the end of it, they had been in the room for up to five hours, and Gabriel Reyes had certainly damned himself to life in prison. 

“There you have it, all my sins and vices. Now let me return to my cell so I can sleep,” Gabriel says. 

Tracer gets up silently, feeling lightheaded. Mccree rests a hand at the small of her back, leading her out before he shuts the door behind the two of them. They stand in the illuminated hallway for a long moment, Mccree silent as ever, Tracer lost on who he was. 

“What do you think, rookies?” Jack Morrison asks, and they turn. Jack stood at the end of the hallway, a mug of coffee in his hand as he faces them down. Tracer runs a hand through her hair, feeling exhausted. 

“I think I don’t know anything,” Tracer says at last. Jack smiles at her, extends the cup of coffee to her. 

“Here, drink some coffee. I suspect Mr. Mccree has some explaining to do to you. I have someone to speak to, if you’ll excuse me,” He walks down the hallway, presses the mug into Tracer’s hands before he slips into the interrogation room, shutting the door firmly behind him. 

They’re alone in the hallway once more, and Tracer takes a sip of coffee, glaring at Mccree as she does so. He takes off his cowboy hat and rests it against his chest, closing his eyes. 

“I’m not a bad man, Lena. I’ve done some awfully terrible things in my past, but I’m trying to right them,” he says. 

“You could’ve started by telling me who you were. Before I had to find out by the hands of some criminal. Were you ever planning to tell me?” She asks.

“No, I wasn’t. I didn’t want you to think lowly of me. I thought...if you didn’t know, if no one knew but Jack and Gabriel and me, it would die quietly,” he admits. 

“Unbelievable,” she shakes her head in wonder at him, “you think I’m just...some gullible person to take advantage of, like my opinion doesn’t even matter in the slightest. I told you everything about me, Jesse Mccree, because I cared,” 

And she had. She spent hours of their empty work days telling him about her escapades in the air force, the sights she saw while flying all over the globe completing missions. She had even told him about her pet guinea pig that had gone off and died the day before a school dance, how she had stayed home because she was so upset about his passing. 

She was not going to cry in front of him. 

“Lena…” Mccree begins, a look of concern on his face. 

“No. Don’t. I’m-find yourself a new partner, because I’m done,” She turns away from him, briskly walks down the hallway clutching her mug of coffee. She slams it down on the Pharah’s desk as she passes, glad that she wasn’t in today. She knows Pharah would want to settle things between Mccree and her. But some things just couldn’t be worked out over coffee. 

She grabs her bomber jacket off the floor in their shared office, looks around at the empty box of donuts on Mccree’s desk. At the crude drawings of their fellow police officers saying and doing stupid things littered all over their walls. Tracer bites her lip, because this was her home, more than the empty apartment she returned to each night. 

She turns to go, and nearly crashes into Mccree. 

“You have to let me explain everything, give me a chance now that you know,” Mccree says. 

“Not right now, I-I’m too upset, and whatever you’re gonna say will make it worse,” She shoves right past him, and out the door of the headquarters. 

 

She doesn’t go back to work the next few days. Partially due to Mccree, partially because Gabriel Reyes later escaped that night from his cell while the Chief was arranging for transportation to a more highly guarded facility. Work was a mess, she knew. There would be hundreds of piles of paperwork, press to handle, and the quiet realization that her first serious gig had fallen through. 

It’s a Friday when she goes in. Pharah glances up long enough to wave, before returning back to her computer. Reinhardt, Overwatch’s retired cop, was hanging out near Pharah’s desk, talking loudly about a fight he once had with Morrison. Tracer tries not to read into it. It’s clear that the entire office knows that there’s something going on. 

When she rounds the corner to her cubicle, she’s relieved to see that Mccree isn’t at his desk. The familiar old cowboy hat is still on the edge of the divider, and she picks it up. The thing is a worn, beaten old thing really. The metal insignia on top is scratched to all hell, but still polished to a shine. She sets it down on Mccree’s chair before going to her own, where she takes off her jacket and sets it on the back. 

On her keyboard a pink pastry box sat, and for a moment Tracer considers dumping it in the trash. She picks it up instead and opens it carefully. Inside is just a smudge of strawberry jelly and crumbs, and a note. It’s an apology letter from Mccree, written in his familiar old scrawl. 

“The real donut is under your desk, I thought it would be good at the time to act like I ate it,” Mccree says, startling her. Tracer looks over her shoulder, at him. He’s leaning against the cubicle wall, holding two cups of coffee. Tracer gives him a small smile. They’re on uncertain terms, and he knows it. She pulls her chair out and bends down, plucking the ziploc baggie with the donut inside from the top of her desk. The ziploc baggie tears a little, because Mccree had stapled it to the top part of under her desk. 

She sits down and he hands her a mug. She takes a sip of it, wrinkles her nose when it turns out to be too bitter for her tastes. 

“Are you ready for the truth?” he asks. Tracer swivels her chair so she’s facing him, and tucking her legs underneath her, she nods silently.


	2. Ana Gets her Revenge

With little to no lead on the whereabouts of Gabriel Reyes, the Overwatch department was stuck right back into its former rut. Tracer found herself more often than not staring blankly at an empty computer screen, with mounds of paperwork building up again.

On the bright side, there were no more secrets between Mccree and her. At least, when it came to their criminal pasts. After she had made him pull the staples out of underneath her desk, she had decided to forgive him. Now they were just killing time as usual. So when Pharah came to them asking for a favor, Tracer nearly tackled her out of relief. 

“It’s my mother. I’ve been getting calls about her...well, paintballing the neighborhood kids,” She explains, sitting on the edge of Tracer’s desk. 

“Hang on a minute now, is she doing this unprovoked?” Mccree asks. They all knew Ana. She was practically the founder of Overwatch, having been retired after she lost her right eye in the line of duty. She was completely harmless, as far as old ladies went. 

“No...not exactly. They’ve been egging her house and she’s decided she’s not going to concern any of us about it,” Pharah says. “The thing is though, the parents are getting upset that their children are walking around with welts all over them. They want some police officers to ‘investigate’ the area and discover the paintballer.”

“Have you tried telling her to stop?” Tracer suggests uselessly. 

“She’s perfectly within the law to defend her property, especially if she paintballs them while they’re on her lawn. Still, she’s too old to be sniping at little kids,” Pharah looks at them both pleadingly. 

“I guess we can try talking to her,” Tracer offers, earning an exasperated look from Mccree. She knows that this is practically newbie level stuff, but she can’t stand another second cramped in their office. 

“Thank you so so much, I owe you guys one.” Pharah hops off the desk and heads back out of the cubicle. Tracer beams at Mccree.

“I call shotgun,” She says. He rolls his eyes at her, grabbing his keys off his desk. Together they exit the headquarters, Tracer donning a pair of aviators as the sunlight hit them. Leaves skittered across the parking lot, collecting in piles against the building. 

“Any plans for tonight Lena?” Mccree asks, unlocking his car. She slides into the passenger seat, noting the little bucking bronco air freshener hanging on his rearview mirror. She wonders how deep this cowboy obsession goes. 

“No, not really. What about you?” She asks as he slips into the car. 

“I think I may have a bit of a plan on how to get these kids to stop,” He says. 

“Is it legal?” She asks. 

“Of a kind,” He says, offering her a mysterious smile as he revvs the engine. 

They don’t go to Ana’s house first. In fact, they take a detour down a nice little subrub, where Mccree pulls in front of an old fashioned home with a wrap around porch. 

“Stay here, I gotta grab somethin’ real quick,” He says, jumping out of the car. He jogs into the house, and a moment later opens the garage door, holding up a dusty old chainsaw. Tracer shakes her head at him through the windshield, and he laughs at her. 

He grabs a long trenchcoat as well, not that she’s ever seen him in one in her life. He throws both into the backseat before getting back in, shutting the door behind him. 

“The way I see it, Ana’s not gonna back down unless those kids stop first.” He says. 

“So you plan to go at them with a chainsaw and do what, exactly?” Tracer asks. 

“See, that’s why I keep ya around, to think the rest of it through,” He replies. 

“Hmmph,” She says in way of response. Mccree turns on western music of all things, and Tracer groans inwardly. Why did she have to be paired up with the weird cowboy with a deep dark past? 

They pull into yet another cozy suburb twenty minutes later. This time there are white picket fences, and massive oak trees in every yard. Tracer sees Ana’s house up ahead, its tree coated in toilet paper. She lets out a little sigh. There’s no way these kids didn’t deserve to be get in trouble for doing something like that to Ana. 

“I think I have an idea,” She says as they pull into the driveway. Mccree turns off the car, and Tracer hops out. She bounces up to the front door, where she rings the doorbell. It’s quite some time before Ana appears at the door, long enough for Mccree to bring the chainsaw and trenchcoat up to the front steps. 

“Are you here to take my paintball guns away?” Ana demands, resting a hand on a hip. 

“Wouldn’t even dream of it, doll,” Mccree says beside Tracer. 

“I’d shoot you between the eyes before you could,” She deadpans to Mccree, and with a sigh gestures for them to follow her inside after a moment. Tracer and Mccree exchange a look before following her inside. 

The inside is spotless as usual, with a minimalist style to the rooms. They pass right through to the kitchen, where Ana hands them each a pumpkin cookie. 

“I don’t take much joy in hurting those kids, but I can’t keep climbing ladders day in and day out to get the egg off the top of my roof, never mind the toilet paper in the tree,” She moves from the table to the window, where she gazes out into the backyard. 

“I thought that maybe if i hit one, they’d take the hint and back off. But now they think it’s an outright war, and if I’m not mistaken, I think I saw one of them lugging a few cans of paint to their house,” Ana says, and turns to them. 

“I think they intend to bathe my porch in a nice neon green shade,” She says. 

“Well, Jesse and I have the perfect thing coming for them, don’t worry,” Tracer says, and punches Mccree lightly in the shoulder. He just looks at her with an unimpressed air, and shoves the rest of his cookie in his mouth. 

Tracer ends up climbing the tree to take down all the toilet paper while Ana gets Mccree ready for their master plan. While up in her perch, Tracer watches a couple of kids scurry around on the far sidewalk of Ana’s home. They all appeared to be congregating to a whitewashed home with a colonial porch. She tries to see what exactly they’re doing, but when one notices her snooping, they flip her off before ducking into the house. 

She drops back down to the ground with a garbage bag full of toilet paper and a sense that she was about to be dealing justice. When she goes inside Ana’s house, the place is absent of all life. After disposing of the bag in the kitchen, she climbs the stairs until she finds Mccree sitting on the edge of a bed, dressed in a trenchcoat and face coated in ghoulish make-up. 

“Enjoy being all dolled up?” She teases, leaning against the doorframe. Mccree makes a face at her. 

“Can’t say it’s my favorite thing, that’s for sure,” He admits, just as Ana bustles back into the room from the bathroom, carrying yet more makeup supplies. 

“Why’s that?” Tracer asks, moving to sit on the edge of the bed so she can watch Ana work.

“Fidget too much,” he says out of the corner of his mouth. 

“It’s like you’ve never had anyone look at you for longer than a minute,” Ana scolds, swiping at his face with a towel, rubbing some misplaced makeup away. Mccree rolls his eyes, and Tracer stifles a laugh. 

In the end, Ana manages to make Mccree look like he’s half dead. Together Tracer and Ana add tasteful splotches of blood to his trenchcoat with some homemade fake blood that she teaches them how to make. By the time he’s ready, the sun had set just an hour beforehand, and Ana was nervously pacing. 

“They’re gonna be hitting any moment now, it’s a school night after all.” She says, peeking through a curtain and into the backyard. Mccree watches her move about the house, holding the old chainsaw in one hand and a glass of liquor in the other. Tracer nibbled on a cookie. 

What tips them off is the sound of laughter outside, muffled shushes and ‘you’ll wake the witch!’ Mccree positions himself just beside the door, and Tracer by the front door. Ana opens the door just as Mccree starts up the chainsaw, and with a roar he charges out of the house, scattering screaming children. 

Tracer watches as Mccree chases them from the yard, all but for one who turns at the last moment and tosses the can of paint at Mccree. It gets him full in the chest, and Tracer winces as she notices that it’s splattered all over the front of him. 

Mccree trudges right back up the yard, and stands at the foot of the porch, trenchcoat coated in what turned out to be neon green paint. 

“Well, we can’t always succeed now can we?” Ana says cheerfully. And because she’s especially nice, she lets him hose the paint off himself with her hose outside. 

Tracer waits for him on the front of the porch along with Ana, laughing about how fast the neighborhood kids had scattered. 

“Please don’t paintball anymore kids, cause I think Jesse just might make me chase after them next time,” Tracer tells Ana, to which she just laughs.

“As long as they don’t go throwing anymore eggs at my house, you have my word,” Ana allows, reaching over and rubbing Tracer’s back. Tracer tilts her head up to the sky, happy to just of settled some small matter without a hitch. 

It’s a whole other matter when Mccree comes trudging back around, soaking wet and looking bedraggled.

“At least it’s not my car we’re driving,” Tracer jokes.

If looks could kill.


End file.
